


Feeling-Words

by JenCforCarolina



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, destiny titan, destiny warlock, fireteam, ikora rey warlock vanguard, voidwalker warlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 17:03:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6292630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenCforCarolina/pseuds/JenCforCarolina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An exploration of the workings of the Void, exos, warlockeyness and Selene’s coming of age. <a href="http://fishingboatproceeds.tumblr.com/post/122182141428/23-emotions-people-feel-but-cant-explain">Inspired by a list of 23 words for feelings.</a> I used 21 of the 23. Didn’t feel like forcing the last two that wouldn’t come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [ Find it on Tumblr here](http://jencforcarolina.tumblr.com/post/126370140853/feeling-words-part-1)

With the Void came emotion. Feeling. Selene felt Alive. She felt Organic. She did not understand, and it was distracting. She needed to deal with it, and so she set about the task the only way she knew how. Research. Wherever Auburn took her she looked for information, archives, databases, anywhere to find words. She needed words. Needed definitions and classifications. She needed to pin down the things she felt. They had to be named to be understood. But her rampaging search left her with few answers, and more with lumps of words and lumps of emotions, like two piles of puzzle pieces, that needed to be matched.

She set her mind to work, testing memories to words, trying to understand, trying to feel. She had to dump her overloading cache more frequently, so much that Auburn noticed and questioned why Selene stopped to rest so often now. It became evident the puzzle would only be solved with time.

And it was. One by one, as days went by, the puzzle pieces fell into place.

* * *

**Sonder.** The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own.

This was the first to click. It snapped in place one day when they were in the Cosmodrome, and Selene caught Auburn staring at a car beyond the walls. She stared at it a long time, in a half tense, half relaxed sort of way. Then she inhaled with a sniff, something Selene knew humans did when there was dust or particles in the air that irritated the sensory hairs in their nostrils. But Guardian helmets were sealed, no way for dust to get in.

She remembered they also sniffed when they cried.

And when Auburn turned to go with heavy steps despite her characteristically light tone of voice, Selene knew she was right to feel, and knew she wasn’t the only one who did.

* * *

**Opia:** The ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.

She saw Auburn use this look on Eyahn many times. The look of undying devotion. The look of a mother. All softness and kindness and an aura of warmth. So strange how when the eyes showed sorrow and the lips showed joy, the combination was love. Human faces were not read like throat lights. They were a spectrum of overlapping signals. The most complex showed the simplest emotions.

And one day, in the reflection of the jumpship’s status panels, she saw Auburn turn that look to her. It was disarming. Selene purposely looked away.

* * *

**Monachopsis:** The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place.

She had felt this every day of her life in the city where she had lived Before. It was something she hadn’t placed until she realized it was gone. Here, now, surrounded by all the other Guardians, she noticed how they acknowledged one another. Either with nods or smiles, bows or waves, even glaring amongst rivals. There was the acknowledgement of existence that was so thrilling. Nothing like the bare passingby that was the norm in her last home. No one belonged there. Here, everyone belonged. Even she.

* * *

**Vellichor:** The strange wistfulness of used bookshops.

The first time they went to Venus, Auburn took her to the Library. Her mentor stopped at the Vex conflux in the center of the room, Selene stopped a few paces behind.

Dust in sunlight was something she had often seen, but never matched to peacefulness like this. There had been dust where she had lived when she was alive. Sunlight too, sometimes. But it wasn’t the same. She distinctly remembered feeling negatively about the dusty sunlight. It meant smog, it meant poor weather. It meant the general populace of her town would be instinctively arguable.

But Auburn looked at the dusty sunlight and sighed, emanating peace and positivity. She commented on how pretty it was.

And Selene didn’t know why but it made her look at the rays of sunlight differently. It did have a quiet appeal. The dust moved slowly, she tracked specks like stars across the night sky. She found evidence of slight breezes in the way the particles moved. The air currents were subtle and detecting them and calculating their magnitude and velocity was a pleasant challenge.

When Auburn had collected the scans they came for, she was somewhat sad to go.

* * *

**Rubatosis:** The unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat.

It was the first time she died. Or the second rather, the first hardly seemed to count. She hadn’t noticed the Light when she awoke from that first one. She was too disorientated, too confused by her new life, her Void, her Ghost. But this time, this time she sensed the Light. It filled the cracks in her everything, in her mind and body. It cradled her consciousness as her Ghost and Auburn’s Ghost worked to bring her back to the physical world they called living.

It was the same as the Void but somehow the opposite. The Void was kinetic Light, it pulled and pushed and prodded. It was active, it moved emotions, dragged them in and out and molded them. The Light… simply was. It WAS emotion, purest feeling, everything and nothing at once in a solid state. It was an impossibility but Selene’s subs and algorithms weren’t there to say so, so it remained entirely possible.

It was the first time she felt unlimited, unrestrained. Even wrapped in the folds of the Light as she was, her mind felt free and unburdened. It was a pleasant sort of discomfort. She realized it was the closest to having an organic mind she would ever get. Closest she’d ever get to a beating heart, convulsing lungs. She was thankful for those fleeting moments.

* * *

**Kenopsia:** The eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet.

Clovis Bray was the site of an apocalypse. The city was already crumbling. The Cabal weren’t helping.

It was different from Venus. Venus had flora and fauna everywhere. There were small birds and large insects and reptiles and creatures everywhere. Noise and commotion, everything lived and moved amongst the abandoned Academy. But on Mars, hardly anything lived any longer. And with the Vex monuments rising from the rubble, the place was positively haunting.

The train station particularly bothered Selene. She knew stations, she knew trams. She knew bustling and pushing and that awkwardness where everyone was close together but no one wanted to touch each other so the dozens of them were ramrod straight on a moving train, straining to keep to themselves as the inevitability of bumping one another came again and again. They were like weighted dominoes, they clicked into each other, creating rippling bumps, but never fell. Only threatened.

And as Auburn weaved her way between tracks and abandoned trains Selene followed, remembering the distant rumbles, the rushes of air, chimes of automated messages.

They echoed in silence.

* * *

**Mauerbauertraurigkeit:** The inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like.

It was the feeling that came when she was close to a reset, this need to be alone. It led her to the Void. It was her catalyst. The Void was solitude, the Void was pure aloneness, but only when Selene was alone. It was always hungry for information, probably the reason Warlocks delved so easily into it. It reached and prodded at every burning light it saw, trying to understand them whether she wanted to or not. The Void in Selene acknowledged all the emotions of those around her and pulled at them, tested them. Displayed them for the Guardian to wallow in.

Auburn was the most painful. She was easily hurt and she hid those emotions from the outside world. Bottled them up. But emotion had a need of being expressed and since she refused to do it outwardly, her feelings were displayed in her Light. It was worse even because of their fireteam, their Light intertwined from being so close all the time. Light naturally harmonized among teammates who rezed one another frequently. As Selene’s affluence with the Void grew and the more bound their Light became, the more she could feel the other’s emotions.

She didn’t like it. It felt intrusive, it felt wrong. And more than anything it made her feel awful about herself. Because Auburn was pure. Auburn wasn’t lying, wasn’t tricking her. Auburn truly didn’t hate her. And that countered everything she had once believed about humanity.

* * *

**Énouement:** The bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self.

There was a day she realized it was useless to hate people so blindly. A day she had sensed coming for a long time. A day she had feared. She thought her world would break, fall apart, as the very core of her being vanished. But no, the moment of that realization was the same moment as another. The understanding that she had stopped hating long ago. It only took her until now to realize it was okay.

She still was not kind. She still was stubborn and suspicious and crass. But did she hate strangers anymore? No, she didn’t think she did. And it was okay.

* * *

**Jouska:** A hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head.

So many times while Auburn slept, she sat awake. Observed her light, watched it trickle around her and pool. She played with that Light, or at least her Void did. It was relaxing, hypnotic, something for her mind to work on when it wasn’t full enough to dump.

Then one night en route back to the tower, Auburn’s Light spiked. It was usually gentle, fierce and powerful but gentle, like a strong wind ruffling the folds of your cloak. Suddenly, one night, it was a hurricane.

It took her a few minutes to understand but then she activated her optics for more information and saw the Titan curled up in the Regulas 99’s pilot’s chair, shaking.

Nightmares.

Selene shut down her optics and watched the Light, enraptured, for a full minute. She’d never seen it do that before. Never seen so many boiling emotions. She wondered if she should do something, grappled with the potential consequences.

Subroutine Selene stood and shook subroutine Auburn awake.

Subroutine Auburn was startled awake. “What’s wrong?” she asked “What’s happening? Are we at the tower?”

“No. It looked like you were having a nightmare.”

“Well I wasn’t,” Subroutine Auburn snapped. Selene’s mind stopped, backed up in the conversation. The Void was insistent, there most certainly was a turmoil of negative emotions there. Nightmares, undoubtedly. But Auburn would never snap at her when Selene hadn’t snapped first.

“Oh. Thank you.” Subroutine Auburn said instead. “That was really nice of you.”

Subroutine Selene was uncomfortable. So was primary Selene.

“How did you know?” Subroutine Auburn asked, and subroutine Selene did not want to answer. Primary Selene decided to not wake the real Auburn.

But even as she made that decision she was at her mentor’s shoulder, hand there. The Void leapt forward and tugged at the emotions but Selene’s Void cannot affect other’s emotions, cannot steal them away, only her own. So instead they mimicked and gave her the rushing feelings of despair and terror that were plaguing the Titan.

Then they dissipated and she was awake.

“Huh?” Auburn- real Auburn- woke with a start. Her eyes were wild. Yes. Nightmares.

“You uh, you looked like you were slipping in the chair.” Selene said lamely. “Thought you might fall.” She took her hand away and retreated back to the back wall.

“Oh. Thanks.” Auburn didn’t say any more. She rubbed at her eyes a little. After a moment of sitting she got up and joined Selene at the back wall, albeit in the opposite corner. She sat down and tilted her head into the wall. It didn’t look remotely comfortable.

“Thanks.” She said again, and averted her gaze. Selene kept a leash on her Void the rest of that night.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chrysalism:** The amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm.

It stormed often on Venus. Rained sulfur and snowed metal. It was like a night in the midst of perpetual day.

They didn’t need to stay of course, they could just return to orbit, move on, cancel whatever they were doing due to the acidic rains, but Auburn liked to stay. Liked to huddle in the ruins of the Ishtar Academy, usually in one of the taller towers, in rooms that were once offices or dormitories. She would pick a corner, but one with a good view of the outside, and just stare.

She said she’d rather stand in it but that it probably wasn’t wise. The weather on Venus was unpredictable and could be deadly. Being washed away by acid was probably a painful way to go.

Yes, this was a word for Auburn, a word Selene felt secondhand. Auburn felt the peacefulness of nature with vigor, she longed for the feeling. The aftershocks of calm that rolled off her were beautiful. Selene allowed the Void to pull them, mimic them. Allowed herself to feel the same way. She felt the release of tension that came with an exhale.

She felt the calm of the storm but it was not her feeling. It was most certainly Auburn’s. Selene was simply along for the ride.

* * *

 **Anecdoche:** A conversation in which everyone is talking, but nobody is listening.

That was the lounge, it was the very definition of the lounge. Big words and loud laughter and disgusting, chaotic noise. Selene hated it, and was grateful that although Auburn loved being social, she couldn’t seem to stand it for very long.

Selene loathed needless speech. Hated the uselessness. Auburn often looked tired after only an hour of dealing with the more pretentious hunters.

They honestly only went to the lounge for Eyahn. Selene hadn’t understood at first, the Awoken girl was tiny and shy among strangers and hid behind Auburn, clutching her mark like a tiny child clinging to a mother’s skirts.

Then one day someone had brought out a deck of cards, and Auburn was absolutely dominating a game of Thirty-One. Most of the hunters didn’t seem to mind, or they could at least control themselves. Another player, a particularly vocal Titan, stormed every time she won a hand. And with uncharacteristically sly shoulder shrugs and flips of her hair she deflected every increasingly enraged shout, much to the amusement of the rest of the players.

Selene found herself thinking maybe the lounge was sufferable. She stole a glance at Eyahn.

Despite her shy self, Eyahn was smiling.

Yeah. The lounge was okay.

* * *

 **Vemödalen:** The frustration of photographing something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist.

They ventured further from the Cosmodrome now. Not as far as the Moscow Dead Zone, but far. Out of sight of the towering walls. Selene made a point to steer away from her old town.

Eyahn came with them sometimes. She was the night guard, a little wraith stalking the shadows when they rested in the evenings, when Auburn slept and Selene stared at the winter sky. Eyahn never stared at the stars, she didn’t need to.

“I feel them all.” The Awoken had told Selene once, suddenly, unbidden. As an Exo, she didn’t understand. As a Warlock she thought she did.

Eyahn didn’t stare until one night, one deep night, when the sky was unnaturally dark and the stars superbly sharp pinpricks. Selene was resting, dabbling in the Void, and she felt Eyahn’s light grow.

She activated optics and saw the tiny figure on a hill a short distance away. She was standing with her arms spread at the sky soaking in the dancing lights. An aurora flickered above her, a haunting, magical river filling the atmosphere. It was so beautiful, something breathtaking that filled her with a need to possess it.

She felt like the first to witness such a view but knew she was not. Knew that millions, perhaps billions of people had witnessed these lights throughout the years. Knew she could not claim it as her own.

But she had Eyahn, had her beautiful joy spread out like a song in front of her. She focused instead on that, committed the feeling to memory. She understood now why Auburn loved her. Selene thought she loved her too.

* * *

 **Ellipsism:** A sadness that you’ll never be able to know how history will turn out.

Auburn knew history. She would spend an hour with the cryptarchs - no more, she was easily frustrated when they did not understand- trying to explain basic historical events and correcting timelines for them. They would ask a question and she’d take a moment to answer, backing it up with ‘no this came before thats’ and 'he wasn’t known until laters’ and 'that’s a myth it never actually happeneds’.

Selene noticed her contentment with history. She was happy with the past, liked to think it could be learned from. Selene knew it couldn’t, only actions of the present affected the future.

Oddly enough, Auburn, the human, was the one bothered by the uncertainty of the future. Selene, the Exo, the program, had lived so long in 'it’s okay it will get better (it has to)’ that the future wasn’t uncertainty. It was a certainty, certain to change that is. Once maybe she would have worried over it but the Void taught her that change is the only constant and there’s no point in predicting.

At the same time though, no one in the present would know how history would be remembered. No way to know whose names would be immortalized for small deeds and whose huge victories would go unnoticed. Any sort of nuance could cause a loss, the slightest thing like a name that’s hard to remember or a face behind a helmet that no one sees, or perhaps another event that’s gained more publicity overshadowing something less known but much much more important in the grand scheme of things. And someone or something or sometime would be forgotten.

It was a sudden, stricken feeling of powerlessness. To watch history unfold and know nothing can be done to preserve its actuality. It will inevitably warp.

Selene wondered how many of the facts Auburn had learned were true.

* * *

 **Kuebiko:** A state of exhaustion inspired by acts of senseless violence.

She regretted it the moment the nova bomb struck. Hated herself, hated the situation, the stupid argument, everything.

It was the best sphere she had ever formed. She hated that too.

Auburn was fine, of course. Their light was bound, they could no longer hurt one another.

But it was the principle of the act. She had thrown the Void at her with the intent to harm. And Auburn didn’t feel angry. She sort of felt proud. But mostly sad. That was a knife in Selene’s gut, she knew the word for that feeling already. Shame.

There was no thought, nothing to process in the shock of what she had just done. Ashamed, so ashamed…

She called her ship and ran.

* * *

 **Lachesism:** The desire to be struck by disaster – to survive a plane crash, or to lose everything in a fire.

She contemplated diving into the Hellmouth and telling her Ghost not to bring her back. In the end she returned to the Tower and slipped into her mentor’s room because it was the last place Auburn would expect her to run to. She sat on the floor on the far side of the bed, out of sight of anyone who might glance in on a casual check, and curled her knees up to her chest. She contemplated words and feelings until her mind was full enough for her to dump her cache and finally rest.

* * *

 **Exulansis:** The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it.

Auburn found her more quickly than she had expected and insisted they talk. Plopped down on the floor beside her and waited quietly for a half hour. Selene tried, she truly tried but for all Auburn’s undying empathy she had never had a life remotely like Selene’s. They had simply lived too many centuries apart.

And part of her didn’t want to tell Auburn how she had been treated. Didn’t want her to know how awful humans could be. Didn’t want to tell her that her human kin had thrown stones at Selene and her people, had treated them as mindless machines, tried to force them to fight the Fallen while they and their families hid in safety.

She didn’t want to explain why it was so hard to trust humans when she saw the same traits show up in them again and again. She wanted to protect her mentor because she was an idealist and bright and naïve. She loved everyone she met until they gave her a reason not to and even loved some select lucky few like Selene beyond then.

She could never understand the discriminating pain she had been through and frankly Selene didn’t want her to understand.

So she stumbled in their talk and grew angry again, more at herself than anyone else and eventually left, after feeling the Light recede, felt her Ghost cut the link to the Void so she wouldn’t blow anything up again.

That was a pang of hurt too, did none of her friends trust her?

* * *

 **Adronitis:** Frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone.

It was her, it was all her fault. She hadn’t… She didn’t know what she hadn’t done but damnit Auburn was a good person. Selene should have seen that, she HAD seen it the moment she saw her. Auburn found her, was kind to her, gave her a ride to the tower. She cleaned up after Selene threw a fit at her vanguard, an immensely embarrassing fit. She talked Cayde into giving Selene missions anyway and talked all of them into letting her be a mentor. She gave her weapons, money, supplies. She had helped barter for her own ship. She had given Selene everything the Warlock could call her own.

And Selene just bitched.

She saw it when they first met, but let her stupid feelings and old misconceptions could her. It took so long for her to pull the bag off her fucking head. Too long.

* * *

 **Rückkehrunruhe:** The feeling of returning home after an immersive trip only to find it fading rapidly from your awareness.

A week she spent alone on Mars. Dropped into the Schiaparelli Crater dead zone. Died a lot. Killed a little. She discovered just how difficult it is to kill Cabal if you can’t get a precise shot on something vital.

She learned, observed the Vex. Jumped some goblins and took them down using only her force palm, just to see if she could do it before they got her with their own similar attack. She could.

She got better. Coach said so. Gave her statistics and comparisons. They were still depressing stats but her kill death ratio was beginning to climb above zero. It was improvement.

She headed back to the tower, at peace for once. She tentatively put on a song Auburn often played on rides. She found herself enjoying it. It was unsettling, she wasn’t used to it, but she poked at the Void, asked it to take away the anger. It greedily obliged, and she was left empty for a moment until the fast paced music brought her back. Coach didn’t comment on her change of attitude. She was grateful.

But then she reached the tower.

When she transmatted she was hit by a brunt of emotion. The Void had grown in her solitude. It reached out, curiously exploring. She struggled to call it back, but not before she noticed people.

Master Rahool noted her arrival and hardened his mood. Banshee made a conscious decision to mute a spike of disgust. Eris let off a flare of discomfort. Various other regulars that recognized Selene showed varying levels of discomfort and moved away from her, some more unconsciously than others.

Ikora, goodness Selene could feel her from here, showed nothing, obviously an expert at concealment. But no doubt she had sensed her arrival and was bracing for a stiff argument.

Selene did her best to pull all her emotions inside her. She wasn’t sure if it actually worked or if anything happened at all, but she wanted to hide. Hopefully the Void would understand that and obey.

Any positivity gleaned from her little sabbatical was gone.

* * *

 **Nodus Tollens:** The realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore.

No words. No event. Just revelation.

* * *

 **Onism:** The frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time.

She wandered the tower all day. Again and again she felt people shying away from her. Realized more and more it was her own fault her own fault. She desperately wanted to be someone else, somewhere else. She just wanted to start over but the damage appeared permanent.

And god forbid she show a weakness. She fell back into her scowl and shell of anger. But it felt half hearted.

Just once she turned and saw Ikora at the bottom of the steps down to the Vanguard’s hall. The woman was watching her. Selene put up her emotional armor of disgust and hurried off to watch the ships land in the hangar.

* * *

 **Liberosis:** The desire to care less about things.

The Void consumed. The Void was tightly bound to emotion and will so if you wanted to will away your emotion the Void would take it. Selene did her best to take advantage of that, but her emotions were hers, attached, linked. And as she let the Void tug them away they tugged at her, threatened turn her inside out and pull her in on herself. She cut the connection when that feeling got too strong. It felt like she would be lost if she gave into the pull.

Still, it helped. It dulled the feelings. Strange how the Void had given her feeling to help her mind cope with the power of the Light. Emotions were a side effect of that, she realized. It was cruel, caring and feeling brought only pain. But even as it brought it, the Void nulled that pain if you allowed it to pull at your mind. It was almost like an apology. She damn deserved one for this roller coaster.

* * *

 **Altschmerz:** Weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had – the same boring flaws and anxieties that you’ve been gnawing on for years.

Different from self-destruction, she wanted self-devourment. The Void nipped at the edges of her consciousness, always, and finally she let it bite. Let it take bits and pieces, the ones that hurt, the ones that stung. She let it pull away her anger and insecurities.

All at once she felt tired, tired. This then, was exhaustion. To her, the time to rest came when there was too much to do too much to feel so much it threatened to breaker her. She rested when she was most excited, most invigorated. Never when tired. When she was tired it just meant she could take on more tasks, fill more processing. Lack of activity was never a problem.

But now she was weighed down by despair. Now she had chains. Needed rest. Her programming could not deliver the rest she needed, so she turned to the void.

* * *

 **Occhiolism:** The awareness of the smallness of your perspective.

She fell into the Void.

She got lost for days. It felt like years. She felt like she was going down, down, that the universe was expanding around her and swallowing her whole. She was dust, she was nothing to the Void. That thought brought fear but the pure Void cannot stand emotion so it took that fear from her and then she was nothing. She thought of nothing and felt nothing at all, until there were arms around her and the Void again became Auburn’s room in the tower. Only the room seemed more purple than it should be. She panicked for a moment, fearing her fall into the nothingness had warped her visual receptors somehow, until the purple dissipated and she realized it had been the Ward of Dawn of a defender titan. Auburn’s Ward, her first.

Selene had fallen into the Void and her mentor had leapt in after and dragged her out.

For the first time she didn’t pull away from contact but buried herself deeper in Auburn’s arms, still feeling absolutely minuscule, but safe. Yes, safe. Perpetual was the knowledge that they were but specks of dust, but in her mind, archived right beside that fact was the fact that they were specks of dust together.

It was enough to put her at peace. She could stomach uncertainty and raw, painful, confusing feelings now. Everything was more manageable once you realized you weren’t alone.


End file.
